He had never been so outraged! For fifty or a hundred yards, as he descended the hill, his fury almost blinded him. His face was congested; the back of his neck swollen and purple, as though apoplexy threatened. His ears showed red as a turkey's wattles. He stumbled on the ill-paved path. What! To be lectured thus by a man whose continued residence on the Islands was a public scandal—a fellow who, past all usefulness, lived on in lazy desuetude, content to take the taxpayers' money while doing nothing in return! And the worst—the gall, the wormwood of it—was that this despised foe had silenced him—nay, had silenced him almost contemptuously. "But wait a bit, my fine fellow!" swore the Lord Proprietor, blundering down the hill. "Wait until we hear what the War Office has to say about your precious garrison; or until, failing satisfaction there, I get a question asked in Parliament about you!"
Could the Lord Proprietor have looked back at this moment into the room where sat the victorious enemy, he might have been in some measure consoled.
The Commandant, having dismissed Archelaus with a wave of the hand, waited while the door closed, and dropping into the chair before his writing-table, bowed his head upon his hands.... Oh, it is easy to talk lightly of riches, and of the power that riches give! But in this world it is not so easy for a man with just one penny in his pocket to stand up against an enemy solidly backed by a banking account. He feels that though his cause be right and his conscience clear, his position is precarious: that the world, if it knew the truth, would regard him almost as an imposter. The feeling may be unreasonable, the fear cowardly; but there it is, and it had cost the Commandant all his pluck to face the encounter out. Moreover, his conscience was not clear.
Sir Cæsar, too, had (all unwittingly) planted an arrow and left it to rankle. "Old enough to be her father!" The Commandant shut his lips hard upon the pain. He could not expel it: he knew it would awake again in the watches of the night: but for the present he must ignore it. He had a second ordeal to face.
As he sat there for a minute or two, his face resting on his hands, his spirit abandoned to weakness, he heard the steady ticking of the clock on the chimney-piece behind him. He counted the strokes, and all of a sudden they recalled him to the present. He pulled himself together, stood up, and, reaching down a clothes-brush from its hook beside the door, walked over to the chimney-piece and to a small mirror that stood behind the clock.
"Old enough to be her father." Again, as he caught sight of his face in the glass the smart revived; but again he expressed it, and fell to brushing his worn tunic with extreme care. It had always been his practice to dress punctiliously before going into action, even on dark nights in front of Sevastopol, where all niceties of dress were lost at once in the slush of the trenches. His forage-cap received almost as careful a brushing as his tunic: and from his cap he turned his attention to the knees of his trousers and to his boots, one of which was cracked, albeit not noticeably. He had half a mind to black its edges over with pen and ink, but refrained. Somehow it suggested imposture, and to-day he winced sensitively away from the first hint of imposture. He must walk down-hill delicately, like Agag. To-morrow Harvey, the Garland Town cobbler, would repair the damage with a couple of stitches, at the cost of one penny: and the Commandant reflected with a melancholy smile that he possessed precisely that sum.
His toilet complete, he took a last look in the mirror to assure himself that his face betrayed none of the anxiety eating at his heart. It was paler than ordinary, but calm. He drew a long breath, and walked out to the front door. At his feet the chimneys of the small town sent up their mid-day smoke; beyond, the Atlantic twinkled with its innumerable smile. The hour was come. As he stepped out upon the road he cast a glance to right and left along his deserted batteries, and answered the smile of Ocean whimsically, ruefully. If only, as an artilleryman, he could have summoned Mr. Fossell's Bank by a dropping shot! This business of hand-to-hand assault belonged by rights to another branch of the service.
Mr. Fossell stood behind the counter in conference with a junior clerk, and the sunshine pouring through the windows—the only plate-glass windows in Garland Town—gilded the dome of Mr. Fossell's bald head. As the Commandant entered, Mr. Fossell looked up and nodded pleasantly, in a neighbourly way, albeit with a touch of ironical interrogation. He had heard gossip from his friend Pope of the doings on Garrison Hill, and, so far as he allowed himself to be jocose, he meant his glance to be interpreted. "Well, you are a pretty fellow! And pray what account are you going to give of yourself?" But very different thoughts preoccupied the Commandant, and his fears took alarm.
"Good morning," said the Commandant, and forced a smile. "You have been expecting me, I hope?"
"Dear, dear!" Mr. Fossell affected surprise. "You don't tell me that pay-day has come round again already?" This again, was a form of pleasantry which he repeated month after month; but to-day he slightly over-acted it.